Pay Here

By admin 2018-11-30

November 30, 2018 - The Tirupur Exporters’ Association (TEA), the largest knitwear/readymade garment cluster of India, has appealed to Union textiles minister Smriti Zubin Irani and sought an early settlement of Rebate on State Levies (ROSL) claims, which have been pending for months. The ROSL claims have not been cleared to the sector for the past three months. ROSL claims are given to compensate the embedded taxes on petro products, Mundy tax and electricity that were not included in the ambit of goods and services tax (GST). TEA’s president Raja M Shanmugham pointed out the garment export sector had started looking up with a positive trend only in October this year after witnessing a declining phase for a year due to the implementation of GST. The cluster hoped the trend would continue in the coming months, too, he said on Thursday. According to him, for the Tirupur knitwear cluster alone, the pending ROSL claims (1.7% free on board worth exports) worked out to be Rs 105 crore. He added that the settling of pending claims would be helpful to the plants at a time when the units are operating under wafer-thin margin and struggling to sustain in the price-conscious global market. These have to compete against the countries which are enjoying duty-free status in the European Union and the United States markets. “It is a fact that the exporting units are taking various measures to cut down their costs to be competitive. In this regard, we have made an appeal to Smriti Zubin Irani, Union minister of textiles, to clear the ROSL pending claims expediently,” he said. Shanmugham also said it was high time that India should also expedite the Free Trade Agreement with Russia as the latter had already given a green signal to India’s competing country, Bangladesh, for the import of duty-free garments. Russia is a huge market and more leading retail stores have set up shops there. It is right for us to continue to have a negotiation and enter the pact at the earliest to reap the benefit.